


The Final Door

by Kyriadamorte



Series: Written post-TLJ [28]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Amnesia, Dark Rey (Star Wars), Dark Side Rey, Denial, Dreamscapes, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Rey-Centric, Seduction to the Dark Side, heavy theorizing for TROS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 16:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyriadamorte/pseuds/Kyriadamorte
Summary: There are rooms in Rey’s mind that should never be opened.





	The Final Door

There are rooms in Rey’s mind that should never be opened.

She locks them tighter with every tally against the wall. What’s important is today. She is Rey. She is nobody. She is not special. The wind and sand and hunger and time erode away more and more until she is left with a single portion of new truths.

Her name is Rey. There’s nothing special about her. She can take care of herself; she doesn’t need anyone else. She needs to eat. She needs to wait. They’ll be back. Some day.

The doors close tighter.

~

The first door opens in a castle in a forest. She wanders off, wanders down, down, and follows the whispers. 

_ “It calls to you.” _

She hasn’t made any tallies. The locks are breaking.

The chest cracks open (the door cracks open) and power reaches out to her - a rushing river where there was once a trickle. 

_ “These are your first steps.” _

(But are they, though?)

A new power has awoken inside her.

(An old power has awoken inside her.) 

And she’s terrified.

But the door stays open. And, eventually, Rey walks through.

~

The second door is not so much opened as pulled off its hinges.

_ “You’re so lonely, so afraid to leave.” _

She’s not. (She is.)

But it’s alright. She smashes his doors, too.

~

The third door is also him - 

_ “They were filthy junk traders; sold you off for drinking money. They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert.” _

\- or maybe she’d already cracked it open herself.

_ “They were nobody.” _

(before, before, already opening)

_ “You had a father who loved you, who gave a damn about you!” _

Regardless, the door is wide open now and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts (almost as much as his betrayal, almost as much as the knowledge of what she has to do).

The truth comes out, a dark and rotting spectre - all the worse for being locked away to fester - and kills the hope Rey had clung to all these years.

They won’t come for her. They were never coming for her.

And, still, another door remains locked.

~

A year or so goes by and still it remains locked.

But there are days - 

_ A stormtrooper dies. And then another. Around her, mountains of dead bodies, masked, but screaming out through the Force in their silence. And she must, she must, she knows this, but- _

_ An officer looks up at her with blank, empty eyes. _

\- that are sometimes - 

_ Leia hugs her and it hurts more than it should. _

\- harder than others. 

_ She closes her eyes, desperate to sleep, and her own voice echoes back at her. “Why did you hate your father?” _

The door groans at its hinges.

~

The fight gets more desperate and more falls to Rey’s shoulders. She nearly buckles under the weight.

She looks across the galaxy for answers. In the books she’d taken (stolen) from the galaxy’s hero, in the whispers in dingy cantinas, in ancient markings inside twisting caves and caverns.

They’re running out of options.

She looks to the door.

The others had hurt, yes, but she’d come out stronger. She needs to be stronger.

She looks to the door.

Not yet.

(Soon.)

~

When the door finally opens, Rey worries that it’s empty. But, no, there’s a small girl with three loose buns sitting in the corner, crying. Rey steps forward - to comfort her? To ask her why she’s here? To steal her away? She doesn’t know. But there’s something else in the room.

Two figures - with a nose like hers and a mouth like hers and coloring like hers, but their faces keep shifting behind steady masks of anger. They’re large, larger than any humans Rey has ever met, and yet the nightmarish distortion, the looming power they have over her feels familiar, feels right.

“You think you can steal from me, you ungrateful little brat?”

“I was hungry,” she says (the little girl says).

“You’re lucky I’m even bothering to feed a freak like you.”

He’s advancing on her and he’s shouting. The words drift together, but it’s loud, loud, loud. The woman’s angry, too, but she’s scared. And underneath it all the man’s scared, too. Rey can feel it all (the little girl can feel it all) and it’s so much, it fills her up, and her own fear and anger rise to meet it. Louder and louder they all grow.

Outside the door, a man’s deep, familiar voice calls out to her.  _ “Rey? Rey! Rey, listen to me! Rey!” _

She can’t breathe. There are fingers around the little girl’s throat (around her throat).

_ “Rey, come back!” _

Blood rushes in her ears and something rises up within her, bursts out, expands to fill the room. She presses, squeezes. Harder, harder. The hand loosens and Rey can breathe again, but can she? She still hears choking, gasping, rattling breaths, so she pushes harder, squeezes harder. The darkness grows and grows until it fills the whole room, until it fills every corner of Rey herself.

The girl is gone. Rey is gone. All light is gone.

Only her family’s small fire is left, the muted light flickering against her parents’ blank, empty eyes.

~

Yes, she opened this, the final door.

And the monster walks out.

(And a monster walks in.)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on my theory/hope that Rey's inner darkness leaves the door open for Palpatine to possess her combined with the common headcanon/theory that Rey accidentally killed her parents as a child.


End file.
